17. Moving Simplified

We’ve moved eight times in fifteen years. Here are some things we learned along the way:

1. Before you move, go through the uncluttering exercise outlined in #1.

2. Most people start packing long before they need to. As a result, the house looks like a disaster area for weeks before the actual move. The average household can be packed up in less than a week. If you hire movers to do the packing, it can usually be done in one day, but get an estimate from them as to how long they will take. Set aside one room in the house in which packed boxes can be kept out of the way while you are packing up.

3. When packing, start with treasures such as vases and art objects (of course, these are now going into the mathom box, #35); then do books, linens, clothes, and personal items. Pack the kitchen last, preferably on the morning of the move while the movers are loading everything else into the van.

4. Make sure the place you are moving to is cleaned and ready to live in.

5. Set up a system of colored labels for the movers to use. All boxes with red labels go to the kitchen, all boxes with blue labels go to the living room, etc.

6. If you’re moving across town, move the kitchen things you’ll need for your next couple of meals—dinner tonight and breakfast in the morning—the clothes you’ll need, and an overnight kit, in your own car. These will be the things you’ll unpack first.

7. Use the large wardrobe boxes for your clothes, and load them directly from the closet in the old place into the closets in the new place. If you’ve simplified your wardrobe (#22), you’ll have little to pack.

8. When packing books, start with the top shelf of a bookcase, and move from left to right all the way down to the bottom shelf. Take a stack from the shelf and put them right into the box in the same order. Label the boxes by bookcase and by number. Don’t worry about filling every square inch of space in the box. You may use a few more boxes this way, but it is so much simpler.

Instruct the movers to set up the bookcases in the new house, and to stack the book boxes next to them in numerical order. Start with box number one, and stack the books on the shelves exactly as you packed them, in the same order.

9. Whenever possible, use a mover who’ll sell you boxes and then will take them back at half price. Many moving companies also sell used boxes at considerable savings.

10. Board pets and young children for the day. Older kids can help with the unpacking of their personal things.

11. Draw up a rough schematic showing the rooms in the new house and where you’d like the furniture to be placed. Run off enough copies so you can post one copy on the door of each room. This will save you from having to be on the spot each time the movers bring in a piece of furniture or a stack of boxes. That means you can be in the kitchen unpacking and organizing for dinner that evening, or at least for breakfast in the morning.